


warming up

by fatalize



Category: No. 6 (Anime & Manga), No. 6 - All Media Types, No. 6 - Asano Atsuko
Genre: Alternate Universe, Established Relationship, Fluff, M/M, and lots of fluffy puppies, lots of hand holding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-27
Updated: 2019-12-27
Packaged: 2021-02-25 20:41:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,963
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21991603
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fatalize/pseuds/fatalize
Summary: Safu and Inukashi put Nezumi's snowman-making skills to the test. Shion pets some puppies. Nezumi just wants some alone time with his boyfriend.Written for the 2019 No. 6 Secret Santa event as a gift for flat-san on tumblr!
Relationships: Inukashi & Nezumi (No. 6), Inukashi & Shion (No. 6), Nezumi & Safu (No. 6), Nezumi/Shion (No. 6), Safu & Inukashi (No. 6), Safu & Shion (No. 6)
Comments: 5
Kudos: 49





	warming up

“How lame,” Safu sighs.

“Seriously,” Inukashi agrees. “That’s probably the worst I’ve ever seen.”

“Like a grade schooler made it.”

“My _dogs_ could do better.”

Nezumi narrows his eyes at the two idly making prodding remarks and leaning casually against the wall of Karan’s bakery. Safu is wrapped up in her baby pink scarf, arms crossed, snug and cozy, and Inukashi is wearing a black jacket so long it reaches their knees, their hair loose and messy. “All your dogs can do is turn the pure white snow into a putrid yellow,” he retorts. “This is nearly perfect.”

“Perfect, he says,” Inukashi scoffs.

“The head. It’s off 4.1 centimeters on the left,” Safu points out.

“Are you serious?” Nezumi laughs, disbelieving. “You can tell just by looking?”

Safu furrows her brow. “Of course.”

“Well, if you don’t like it, make one yourself instead of standing there uselessly.”

“You’re the one who said you could do it. We’re testing your skills.” Inukashi smirks.

“Shion and I are already experts,” Safu retorts, not looking at him, examining her fingernails. “It would be unfair.”

“Is that so? One of the boy genius’s many talents is that he’s a master in snowman-making?” Nezumi retorts.

“Don’t turn your anger on me, Nezumi,” Shion says, squatting, examining Nezumi’s ever-so-slightly lopsided snowman. “There’s no shame in not being good at something you’ve never done before.”

“Hey, wait, who said it’s not good? And why would I be ashamed of something so—”

“There you go.” Shion grabs a handful of snow, smooths it into the side of its head. “I bet that feels better, Mr. Snowman. We’ll get you some arms and eyes soon, too.”

“This is ridiculous,” Nezumi mutters.

“Don’t be a sore loser,” Inukashi jabs.

“Shion, that’s not fair. He was supposed to do it himself,” Safu says, lifting herself off of the wall and walking over to where Shion and Nezumi are. Inukashi follows closely behind.

“He made most of it. Besides, wouldn’t you feel bad for the snowman if we just left him like that?”

Safu eyes Shion for a second, hesitates before saying, “I suppose so.”

“Well, there you go. It’s done,” Nezumi says, shrugging his shoulders. “We’re finished here. I’m leaving now.” Without waiting for a response, he turns his heel to start heading away.

But Shion reaches out, places a hand on his shoulder. Nezumi freezes. “Wait. I just said he still needs a face. You can’t quit partway through.”

Nezumi almost sighs, catches himself, says, “And where are we getting its face?”

“My mom has some raisins she said we could use. I’ll be right back.” Shion removes his hand from Nezumi’s shoulder, and Nezumi watches him as he walks back to the bakery. Once inside, Nezumi turns his attention back to the snowman, blank-faced and empty, for a few moments, but feels two sets of eyes boring into him. “Can I help you two?”

“What a brat,” Inukashi says.

“Childish. Immature,” Safu agrees flatly.

“Doesn’t know a damn thing.”

“You’re the ones who suggested this,” Nezumi shoots back. “Why do you care so much about my snowman crafting abilities? I bet you don’t even know either, Inukashi.”

Inukashi sticks their tongue out.

“Simple-minded. Foolish,” Safu continues.

“Vague. Pointless,” Nezumi retorts.

Safu sighs. “I never cared for doing this,” she gestures to the snowman, “but Shion loved it when we were little. I don’t know why. Personally, I think snow is much more interesting when you look at individual flakes under a microscope—”

“Yeah, yeah, you’re a huge geek, we know.”

Safu continues, unruffled. “And the point you’re not getting is that this is something fun Shion likes. And you’re not taking advantage of it.”

“Like a big dummy,” Inukashi teases.

“Enough from the peanut gallery,” Nezumi snaps.

Tongue again.

“Inukashi’s right,” Safu asserts. “At least act like you’re having fun. Instead of being a… a boring…moody—sort of—”

“Dummy!” Inukashi helps.

“Dummy,” Safu agrees.

Nezumi sighs for real this time. Dealing with Shion is one thing, an ordeal in itself, a not depleting but still relatively significant toll on his energy reserves. Inukashi used to be a small annoyance, like a buzzing fly, miniscule and easily swatted away, not too difficult to handle, but ever since their group expanded and they became friends with Safu, the two had become a tiring pair to deal with.

But while Inukashi was a brat, like a kid sibling, Safu was someone more on equal footing he could exchange quips with, and he respected her insight.

Most of the time. Like when she’s not calling him a boring, moody dummy.

“And what? You two are trying to create some sort of romantic atmosphere with snowman building and insults? It’s working wonders so far. As you can see.”

“It would be easier if you had a better attitude,” Safu says.

“And it would be easier for me if you weren’t here.”

“We’re just helping you get it off the ground,” Inukashi says.

“A sort of friend-hangout-turned-romantic-date thing,” Safu adds.

“Didn’t ask for your help,” Nezumi says.

“You need it, though,” Safu counters.

“You—”

The bell above the door of Karan’s bakery jingles, and Shion returns, a small basket in hand. “Sorry I was gone so long,” he says. “Mom actually didn’t have any spare raisins—raisin bread has been popular lately, for some reason. But we found some dried apricots instead.”

“…Great,” Nezumi says, completely unable to care about the dried fruit.

“I’m glad you found something, Shion.” Safu smiles, any trace of harshness from the previous conversation vanished from her expression, replaced only with the gentle warmness she always has around Shion. “We’ll leave the finishing touches to you boys, then. Inukashi and I have other plans.”

“Plans? You two?” Nezumi queries.

“She’s gonna help me identify all the dog breeds I have,” Inukashi says, grinning, obviously excited. “Don’t know ‘em myself. Just know which ones are the fluffiest, best blankets, which are siblings, stuff like that. Don’t know anything about breeds.”

“Didn’t know you were a dog person,” Nezumi says to Safu.

“I’m not partial to any particular animal. But Shion’s interested in ecology, and I’ve helped him study sometimes. I know all the different kinds of both domestic and wild dogs and cats, a variety of fish, rodents, trees, fungi, and more.”

“It’s true,” Shion says. “But she’s lying about not being partial to particular animals. Safu loves cats.”

Nezumi’s not sure why, but Safu almost immediately blushes, as if embarrassed by her fondness of cats. “Well, anyway, we should be going. See you later.” She grabs Inukashi’s hand and starts powerwalking away. Inukashi sticks their tongue out at Nezumi one last time as they’re pulled along.

Nezumi makes no reaction, just turns back around to face Shion, and as soon as he does Shion grabs his wrist, his fingers ice-cold, and puts a piece of dried fruit in his palm.

“We’ll start with his eyes,” Shion says. “And try to make it as symmetric as possible. For Safu.”

_Like she really cares,_ Nezumi thinks, but instead he says, “Hey, maybe you should be wearing some gloves. Your hands are freezing.”

“Oh. I hadn’t noticed.”

“ _Hadn’t noticed?_ Jeez, what an airhead you are. Would you not notice yourself freezing to death unless I said so?”

“Of course not. I was just…caught up in the moment.”

“Don’t be so ‘caught up in the moment’ you get frostbite.”

“We’re almost done. I’ll be fine.”

Nezumi clicks his tongue. “Stubborn, this one.”

“You seem like you’re in a worse mood than usual today,” Shion notes.

Suddenly, without prompting, Safu’s voice enters Nezumi’s head then: _Dummy. It would be easier if you had a better attitude._

“Who has fun out in the freezing cold like this?” Nezumi defends, jamming the apricot Shion gave him into the right side of the snowman’s face.

Shion places the left eye on. Then starts putting the mouth pieces below. “It’s possible. But you have a point.”

As Shion places the apricots on one by one, Nezumi can’t stop staring at his hands. As Shion places the last one, Nezumi reaches out, on impulse, automatically and without thinking, to grab Shion’s still-frozen hand.

“Let’s go somewhere warmer,” he says, tightening his grip on Shion’s hand, “before the both of us start freezing to death.”

Shion holds his gaze a moment before saying, “You really hate the cold, huh.”

“Of course I hate the—” Nezumi starts. Almost sighs, doesn’t. “We finished the snowman, didn’t we? Let’s go somewhere else now.”

Shion snaps a picture of the snowman on his phone with his free hand. _For Safu,_ Nezumi thinks, finding it amusing that Shion was misinterpreting Safu’s interest in the snowman for interest in the thing itself, and not her interest in Shion. Though of course he thought that way. It was Shion.

“If you’re cold, I know a place we can go that’s really warm,” Shion says, reciprocating Nezumi’s hand squeeze.

Nezumi’s first instinct is to argue, to be the one to take the lead, choose the place, but he remembers his earlier sharp remarks, remembers Safu’s voice in his head, and he decides Shion can at least choose the place, and Nezumi could figure out what to do there, as long as they were out of the damp snow and frigid air.

So he says, “Alright,” and Shion starts leading him away from the snowman, their hands still linked, slightly warmer than before.

* * *

“And this one is a Golden Retriever—obviously, ‘cause its fur is gold—and this one is one of our warmest, a Bernese mountain dog, bred and raised in the Bernese mountains themselves—”

Inukashi is going on and on about all their different dogs, proud, smug, Safu grinning, amused, by their side, Nezumi and Shion standing in their doorway, a crowd of dogs surrounding them, eager to greet the new guests. Shion is kneeling on the floor to pet some of the smaller puppies. Safu sits on the stairs with a Pomeranian in her lap. Nezumi is looking off to the side, nonplussed, his hands in his pockets.

Inukashi is holding some light brown fluffy puppy, saying, “This is some mutt, not even Safu could tell, but she thinks it’s some kind of lab mix—”

“Shion, we really had to come here? We just escaped them,” Nezumi says in a low tone.

“There’s no place warmer than Inukashi’s,” Shion says, as one of the dogs Inukashi recently identified as a Chow Chow licks his face.

“And _this_ one—”

“We’re just here to warm up,” Nezumi interrupts. “So if you would kindly show us your warmest, furriest pooch, that’d be great.”

Inukashi, still excited over their newfound knowledge, ignores Nezumi’s rudeness and says, “That would be this ol’ boy,” patting a large, white and very fluffy dog. “He’s a Great Pyr—Great Pire?—Great—”

“Pyrenees,” Safu helps.

“Great Pyrenees!”

“We’ll take him,” Nezumi says.

“Then take him and go. _You’re_ the one who interrupted _us_. Me and Princess Science were having a perfectly good time without you, you know.”

Nezumi sees Safu blush slightly at the nickname, and he can’t help but be amused. For all her haughtiness and brainy-ness, there were times where she was strikingly girlish, and the book-smart rich kid melted away to reveal the normal teenage girl she was underneath. Shion was like that sometimes, too, rattling off complicated theories one second, caught up in something small and human the next.

Safu catches him looking at her, and her expression changes from sheepish to annoyed. She looks like she wants to say, _What are you doing here, anyway?_

Nezumi smirks, ignores Inukashi, turns back to Shion. “Shion, do you hear any yapping from a tiny, unruly pup?”

Shion looks up, distracted, from the growing crowd of puppies at his feet. “What? No, all the puppies here are so well-behaved. I’m impressed!”

Nezumi facepalms. Inukashi laughs.

The Great Pyrenees, now in front of Nezumi, gives a low, soft, “Boof!”

“The old man’s waiting on ya,” Inukashi says.

Without hesitation, Nezumi nods to the stairs, says, “Let’s go.”

The old dog slowly leads them up the stairs, into the guest bedroom, used to the routine. He stops, looks back at them, and once they’ve entered the room, plops itself not on the soft mattress of the guest bed or the plump love seat in the corner, but on the floor.

“Cheapskate.” Nezumi clicks his tongue. “Only one dog for two people, and it wants us to sit on the floor.”

“Don’t complain. It’s better than being outside in the cold still, right?” Shion sits up against the wall on the floor by the dog, and the dog moves over to Shion and licks his hand, his face, then promptly sits on him. Then looks expectantly at Nezumi.

Nezumi, still feeling stubborn, doesn’t want to sit on the floor, but quickly it dawns on him that they’re finally alone (not counting the dog), and even if the pup and Safu are in the same place, they’re downstairs and away from them, and this is probably the closest they’re getting to alone time today.

“Alright, old man, you don’t have to give me those puppy eyes.” Nezumi sits down next to Shion, and the dog adjusts itself so it’s now spread out on both of them, a cloud of cotton puff. Nezumi and Shion are shoulder to shoulder, Shion’s arm moving up against Nezumi’s as he pets the dog.

“Petting dogs is relaxing. If you pet him, maybe it’ll help your bad mood. It’s scientifically proven.”

“I’m so sure.”

“It is.”

“I’m not in a bad mood today,” Nezumi asserts. “This is my normal self.”

“You’re usually grumpy, that’s true. But today you seem even grumpier.”

“It’s that damn Inukashi’s fault. And Safu’s. Their stupid snowman trial.”

“Like I said earlier, there’s nothing to be ashamed of—”

“I’m not ashamed.” Nezumi sighs. Why was he in such a bad mood today? It was Inukashi and Safu’s antics, and layered beyond that, all the previous prodding from Safu about Shion, that Nezumi should be doing something more for him. Something like what? Something to meet her standards, her romantic ideal for Shion? What did she know, anyway? He thought she would give up once he and Shion got together, but ever the perfectionist, she seemed bent on making sure Shion was happy in the way _she_ wanted. As if she could tell him what to do? Screw that. She can take her controlling, pretentious ideas and shove them—

Suddenly, Nezumi felt something warm on his hand. It was Shion, taking his hand and bringing it to the dog’s fur. “Then relax. Pet a dog. We might as well enjoy it while we’re here.”

Their hands joined again, Nezumi is brought back to the moment, here at Inukashi’s, under their dog, because Shion brought them here. Swept away from one thing to another, first in Safu and Inukashi’s plans, then Shion’s. So much for him taking the lead. His hand between the smoothness of Shion’s skin and the softness of the dog’s fur, he notices Shion’s hand is much warmer now, and relenting a bit, he’s glad they came here. After all, he wanted Shion warm, wanted them alone, and here they were, ready for Nezumi to finally do as he wished.

So Nezumi slides his hand out from under Shion’s, gently lifts Shion’s fingertips with his own, kisses Shion’s knuckles. “As you wish.”

Shion’s ears redden. The dog on top of them yawns, stretches, nods off to sleep. Silence lingers a few moments, and Nezumi begins to retract his hand, but Shion quickly grabs tight onto his fingers. Without words, they’re holding hands again, wrists resting on the dogs back, moving slightly with the dog’s steady breathing.

Shion leans into Nezumi. Nezumi places a subtle, quick kiss onto Shion’s forehead. Then he says, “Next time, however, I want to be alone. Completely. Not even in the same house with someone else.”

“No argument. But when we are with the others, try to at least be civil.”

“No promises.”

“Nezumi—”

“Okay, okay. I’ll try. But only if they do.”

Shion sighs. Rubs his thumb along Nezumi’s hand. Nezumi tenses slightly at the gentle motion, then lets himself relax. An innocuous gesture. An innocuous desire for civility. So simple, so silly, so breakable, vulnerable, fragile. Safu is in Nezumi’s head again, telling him to do more for Shion, telling him to have a better attitude. In this quietude, this warmth, with Shion idly resting beside him, his guard loosens, and he starts to think: she’s right.

Not that Nezumi’s done anything wrong, exactly. But maybe Safu has a point.

Because when Shion’s desires are simple, to make a snowman, for peace among loved ones, to relax and be together, maybe Nezumi can try to comply a little easier, without fighting everything first, without trying to escape.

Muffled, he hears Inukashi’s raucous laughter downstairs, Safu’s _Hey!_ followed by a few dogs barking excitedly. Here, in the guest room, tucked away from it all, shoulder to shoulder with Shion, Nezumi finally gives in.

“Man, I’m beat,” he says. “This pooch really is warm. I could take a nap.”

“You never take naps.”

“True. But I wouldn’t mind staying here, until this guy wakes up.” Nezumi pauses. “Or…for as long as you want.”

He waits for a response. Gets none. He looks to Shion, wondering if he’s said something strange—at the very least, he’s said something uncharacteristic.

But Shion is asleep now, breathing steadily in time with the dog. Nezumi sighs.

 _Oh well. Screw it,_ he thinks. Giving in, he closes his eyes, too, rests his head against Shion’s, letting himself relax into the warmth of the two sleeping bodies. _Oh well…_

**Author's Note:**

> This is probably the fluffiest thing I've written (in more ways than one). Fun fact: the reason Nezumi and Shion cuddle with a Great Pyrenees is because I googled "biggest fluffiest dog" and they were one of the first to come up, lol.


End file.
